Not My 2008 Project Resolution List

No. That I still have to put a bit more thought into.

Drumroll, please . . . This is about me this evening actually starting to keep a house renovation resolution, one I was coerced (!) into making when I went to eat pork at some friends' house on New Year's Day.

"We're all going to go around the table and make our resolutions!" said my friend. "We'll write them down and next year we'll see who's kept theirs!"

Her husband resolved to make steady headway on their house rehab. So what could I do? I resolved to do something at least once a week towards getting the woodwork paint stripping done.

(Sunday's five days from Tuesday. That's still within the week, right?)

My intention this evening was merely to use the dental picks to get some of the paint out of the crack between the lintel and the cornice of the dining room doorway casing.

But I quickly figured out that the paint was on the plaster goop the previous-previous owners used to fill the crack. So I got my pry bar and eased off the cornice and took it down the basement to work on it there.

But I already had a trim piece down there on the sawhorses, the jamb from the living room casing. It's been there since last July. It really took priority.

And the heat gun that was recommended to me by Reggie at Howard Hall Farm has been down in my basement since August, and I've never yet used it. In fact, it still had the twist-tie around the cord.

Okay, why don't I have a go at using it this evening?

You would be so proud of me. I actually decided that melted paint residue wouldn't look good on the new jeans and black leather oxford shoes I was wearing. And took the time to change into my grubby work clothes.

And then I went to work with the heat gun on the jamb piece from the living room. Don't know if I just lacked patience, but it didn't seem to make much headway on the paint that'd been treated with paint stripper then dried again.

So I got out the old standby: Howard's Western Wood Doctor Refinisher and medium steel wool.

And it worked. On that living room piece, at least. Happily, we're having a warm spell here in southwestern Pennsylvania, and I was able to open the basement windows. But boy, was I glad when it was time to take the dog outside when I was done!

(I'm also glad that the one cat that ventured downstairs to investigate turned tail and ran upstairs the minute he got a whiff of the refinisher.)

Going strictly on this evening's experience, it looks like I'll have to take down all the trim, use the scraper to get off all the loose paint, use the heat gun to lift the paint that's stuck, and use the Wood Doctor to deal with whatever's left.

I'd hoped to keep the existing natural finish intact as possible and just use another Howard product to even it out, but forget it. Once the stuck paint's off, everything next to it is devastated. Best solution may be to jump on the shellac bandwagon and redo all the trim using that. I've got a spare piece of the 1916 trim left from the time my POs-1 reconfigured the doorways, so I'll have something to match the color by.

I stopped when I ran out of medium steel wool. Following on the mindset resolutions already made, I won't run to the store for it tomorrow. I'll take a day or two and make sure everything I need is on the list-- and anything I don't really need is not.

Doing one piece a week, I may get the crud off all the woodwork by, oh, next September?

Yes, but if you don't do at least one piece a week, it'll get done, like, when?

Mental Remodelling

It having been suggested by our esteemed Houseblogs.net moderators that we make known to our audience our home improvement resolutions for the Year of Our Lord 2008, I take keyboard in hand cheerfully to comply.

. . . Well, actually, I've never been one for making New Year's resolutions. I favor New Year's Ambitions instead. As far back as high school, that's what I've been listing this time of year. "Find out where the elevator behind the Teachers' Lounge goes." That sort of thing.

Resolutions leave me squirmy. "I will never go out of the house with paint under my fingernails." They're full of "always" and "never" and "every day." Blow that sort of requirement even once, your resolution flutters down into the well of guilt and extinction. Resolutions tend to be all about changing oneself-- "I will stop coveting other people's antique furniture." That's hard to do-- and easy to give up on, by, say, January 10th or so. And there, you've ruined another year.

Whereas Goals and Ambitions-- those are fine, objective things. You accomplish your goal-- "Take wood whittling class"-- and you can tick it off your list and feel really pleased with yourself all year.

And in accordance with my usual custom, I could just set some rehabbing goals and join the merry throng of housebloggers who are listing the projects they want to complete in 2008. But I'm having to face the fact that it's my attitude and methods that've kept me from getting much done around this messy, torn-up house in 2007. And that if I'm going to tick any projects off my list, I'll have to do the hard thing and work on straightening myself out, first.

So with the help of God (gee, I feel like I'm taking my ordination vows all over again), in 2008 I resolve to:

1. Deliberately plan projects in terms of time, money, and materials.

I am so good at going off half-cocked! Do you have any idea how many different means and methods of getting paint off wood that I've invested in the past three or four years? I'll be walking through the aisles at Home Depot or Lowe's, and I'll spot some sure-fire tool or compound on the shelf, and "Oooh! shiny! shiny! That'll solve all my paint-stripping problems! I gotta get that!" And just as likely when I get it home, I find I have a can or carton of whatever it is already.

No. Cannot afford that. I can plan perfectly well in behalf of my architecture clients; it's time I exercised that capacity to benefit myself.

2. Accept my limitations and get done what I can get done.

Yes, I haven't gotten a heck of a lot done around here. And it's largely for the head-on-crooked reason that I somehow feel I should get it all done perfectly, all at once. Or at least, within the next month or so. But I can't. I know I can't. But I still feel I should. So it's just easier to go play computer card games and live vicariously through other people's houseblogs, rather than tackle my own house and, oh, no, "fail" to get the entire rehab done perfectly, all at once.

This "should" of magic-wand perfection is hereby hauled out and dumped in the trash can in the alley. The garbage haulers will charge me extra to take it away, it's so big, but it'll be worth the removal fee.

3. Avoid wasting mental effort and physical energy on projects that are not immediate priorities.

Face it, it's so much sexier to think about redoing the bathroom, which is a five-years-out venture, than it is to actually get downstairs and scrub the dormant mold off the basement walls. It's more fun to look at patterns for curtains, than actually to clean up the woodwork around the windows those curtains might someday go on.

But sexy and fun doesn't get me any forwarder. I spend a lot of time dreaming when I could be doing. "Come to meeeeee!" says the vampire-- but I gotta hold up the garlic and the cross and ward off his decadent, time-and-effort leeching charms.

There's more mental remodelling I surely need to do, but that's enough to tackle for one year!

Next post, I'll deal with what this will mean in terms of actual house projects.

Oooh, goodie, I get to make some New Year's Ambitions!

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas

It's now or never for reflections on Christmas decorations.

I got a live, fresh-cut Christmas tree for the first time this Christmas season. Usually, I wait till Lowe's or somebody puts theirs on sale. But this year, the Lowe's trees were 75% off by December 19th-- and you could tell why. Most of them had all the needles fallen off the lower branches. Pathetic.

So on the 21st I went to the only local Christmas tree farm that grows Fraser firs, and got one from them. (The saga is documented here.)

The people at the tree farm said I didn't have to recut the base of the tree after I got home. But next time I'm doing it anyway. It was an hour and a half between the time the saw hit the tree's trunk and the time I got it into water, and that isn't that long. But it hasn't been drinking that much water out of the stand ever since. And that worries me.

Maybe it's not drinking because it's not thirsty, because it was cut fresh? Maybe I'm inexperienced and don't know how a fresh cut tree behaves?

Well, maybe. But if I make a new cut after I get it home, I'll be sure.

Anyway, I put the tree in the stand and brought it inside. This is how it looked:

Nice and conical and symmetrical, right?

And here's how it looked Christmas Eve after I got the lights on it:

Hardly like the same tree. Like something straight out of Dr. Seuss. You expect Cindy Lou Who to make her appearance any second.

What's the problem? Wilting? Dryness? Excessive heat? (In case you're wondering, that baseboard register is closed.)

No, it's the new strings of lights I bought this year and last, the ones with the lamps 3" on center. With my aesthetic insistance that the lights be clipped to the branches and not float loose between them, this goofy result was inevitable. And so up to where I ran out of clips, about 2/3 of the way up, my tree is effectively roped and hogtied.

So you want a New Year's resolution? I resolve for Christmas 2008 to find some lights with wider spacing. The ones I have take too long to put on, anyway.

But here's something that worked, and I recommend it to all pet owners whose dogs and cats like to drink out of the basin of the Christmas tree stand.

You know those e-collars that fit around a dog's neck to keep him from biting himself where he shouldn't? I clipped two of them together around the trunk to keep the cats out of the tree water. I had one e-collar already, and made a mental note to get another from the pet supply store as soon as I saw the kittens make their first beeline for the stand.

It's great. No puddles on the floor and no cats drinking stuff they shouldn't.

Only question I have now is, do I store the e-collars with the pet supplies, or with the Christmas decorations?

Potty Mouth

In mid-November I had to call the plumber.

The toilet in the basement had been slow for months. The waste would flush down, but the TP would not, and the same bits would float around in the iron-tinged water for days.

So I didn't use it unless I absolutely had to. But then the toilet upstairs got plugged. And the stopper lever kept coming off its chain.

So the plumber came, but by then, the upstairs john had cleared itself. He fiddled around with the chain, though, and it worked again.

The basement stool was another matter. He put the snake down, and couldn't find a thing that could be blocking it. But it was undoubtedly blocked.

"I've got awful hard water here," I mentioned. "Do you think it could be calcium deposits plugging it up?"

He took a probe and checked the holes where the water jets are supposed to squirt out around around the rim of the bowl.

"Yes," he agreed, "these are full of lime."

He dug around a little more, but to little effect. "The real problem is this inlet at the bottom of the bowl. And I don't have a tool that'll clear the calcium out ofthere. And I don't know if there's a chemical that's safe for you to try."

"How about white vinegar?" I suggested.

"You could try it. If it wrecks the stool, you're no worse off than you are now."

And he took the minimum service fee for the call under my home warranty plan, and went away.

Well, I tried the vinegar. Four gallons of it, in the tank and the bowl, for two or three days. And it worked! I still can't get over how gratifying it is to see that water swirl around and take everything down in my basement potty.

However. The upstairs toilet still doesn't work as it should. The flapper chain clip started coming loose again and I resorted to a safety pin to keep it on the lever. But that problem was nothing compared to--

Well, let's be civilized and say only that no, one does not insist on putting old socks and whole boxes of Kleenex and half the contents of the cats' litterbox down the stool and expect it to flush. Not at all. But there are certain things any competent water closet should accommodate, and mine, from time to time, emphatically does not.

So this afternoon, I use it, flush it, and put down the lid. I've washed and am about to leave the room when I hear "Guh-loomp! Guh-loomp!"

I turn around. My tabby kitten is lying on the lid. Oh, no, is he about to be sick?

But no. The noise is coming from farther down, from the bottom of the toilet bowl.

I shoo the cat off, open the lid, and see almost no water in the bowl. I flush the toilet. Water pours in, nothing goes down. I give it a few jabs with the plunger and flush it again.

Four-alarm red-alert MISTAKE!!!! The water flooded in and didn't go down and here came the potty water, up, up, up and over the rim and down onto the floor! And it wasn't clean water, either.

I turn off the valve to stop the deluge, then start to work again with the plunger. Of course, that splashes more water out onto the floor. I try easing it in at first, but soon discover that unless you push a good big bubble of air in with it, the plunger just won't work.

So I did what had to be done, and got the stool unstopped.

About then I noticed that oh! looks like there isn't as much water on the floor as I'd thought! Having fetched a couple old bathtowels from the basement, I wiped up the spilled water. And while I was at it, I cleaned the iron stains out of the toilet bowl. And got the vacuum cleaner out and sucked up the cat-hair bunnies from behind the sink and around the water dish and then got a clean towel and washed the rest of the bathroom floor.

Lovely! How nice to have a clean bathroom floor going into the new year, regardless of why I had to do it!

But then I went downstairs to get the clothes basket to put the dirty towels in. And in the kitchen I hear a funny noise: Dripp! dripp! dripp!

Oh, damn, that stupid toilet water went down those bloody bad joints between the wall tile and the floor vinyl, and it was dripping through the joint in the kitchen ceiling sheetrock!

Worse, it was coming down the walls and making big water bubbles of the paint!

Crap.

(So to speak.)

Same damn thing happened last time the upstairs john overflowed, about three and a half years ago, before I got the kitchen repainted. But now it is repainted and oh, no, don't I have enough on my 2008 house To Do list without adding "Touch up kitchen ceiling and wall paint"?

Not to mention "Put a big honking bead of tub caulk around the base of the upstairs bathroom walls, you idiot!" Which I bloody well should have done after the first time it flooded.

Could be worse, I guess. The ceiling joint's in a handy place to relieve the pressure, and it is sheetrock, so I don't have to worry about falling plaster. And the textured finish I have on the walls should keep the water bubble places (which I poked with a needle to drain them) from being too glaringly apparent until I can get around to repainting them.

But still. This was not part of the 2008 plan!

Guess that's part of the joy of home ownership. And several gallons of white vinegar is definitely on my list for my next Costco run. The upstairs can would benefit from two or three days of the 3% acid treatment.

I mean, if it's not calcium deposits that's clogging it up, what could it be?

A Dream, or a Financial Nightmare?

I got a call this morning from the repairman at the local family-owned appliance dealer's.

It'll cost me almost $200 to replace the wonky thermostat in my oven. Maybe more.

That is, if anyone can sell them a thermostat for a going-on-eleven-year-old stove.

If they can't get the part, I get to buy a new stove.

Sorry, I mean, I'll have to buy a new stove.

Get to.

Have to!

Get to!!!

I admit it: I'd really like the excuse to buy this Frigidaire. You know, the one with the cool (or should I say, hot) convection oven converter feature and the regular, medium, and high-powered burners, the big honking oven window, and all the other bells and whistles.

I've been on-line researching prices on the models I saw there, as well as dropping round in person to my local Lowe's, Sear's, and Home Depot. And the price at the family-owned shop is the best going, especially factoring in free delivery, set-up, and haul-away.

But I have no business buying a new stove. I'm still not working full time and my income is drastically limited. Even paying to get the one I have fixed ain't exactly in the budget.

If it's a junker, I really ought to be sensible and get an ultra-cheap pedestrian model with manual oven cleaning and knobs that turn things on and off and that's it.

That's what I ought to do.

But I don't wanna. If I do that, I'll be in conscience stuck with the thing for the next ten years. Or until I sell the house, whichever comes first.

And how is anyone going to be thrilled with my kitchen if it's got only a boring basic range?

So that would justify my buying the model I want, right?

Wrong?

Well, I guess I'll see if the part is available for the eld beast. And make a common-sense decision from that.

(Right.)

Sore Winner

Last Saturday, a circular arrived from the local family-owned appliance store. It announced their "One & Only WINTER Clearance Event!" with "Our BIGGEST Savings of the Year!" Not only that, but I could also enter their Scratch 'n Match contest to see if I had won one of three prizes, the top one being a $10,000 kitchen makeover!!

Well, I don't need that. My kitchen is one of the most pulled-together rooms of my very un-pulled-together house. But I scratched the silver stuff off the number dot anyway.

Did not say "Sorry, You Have Not Won." There was a number there, all right.

But the winning numbers weren't on the circular. Oh. Guess you have to ask about it at the store.

And I needed to stop by there anyway. Because last week when I was about to launch into my big Christmas cookie baking campaign, my oven went haywire. I'd set it for 350, it'd stay there long enough to do one batch, but then the temperature would start to climb. 400, 500, 600 and on and on! Burnt cookies! Smoke alarms going off on every floor! General annoyance and frustration!

If one of their guys couldn't fix my oven, maybe this One & Only WINTER Clearance Event! could give me a line on a replacement stove. And I guessed I'd best do it quickly, since according to the circular, "WINTER" ends on January 1st.

So I walked into the appliance dealer's this afternoon, again thinking how it'd be "just my luck" to win the kitchen makeover, when the room that really needs it is the bathroom.

But I was really there to look at stoves. And I did.

The only one that really fits my specifications is about $150 more than I'd like to spend right now. And the model with the feature that could really get me excited about spending the money (convention oven conversion at the flip of a switch--whoo-whoo!) runs an additional $100 more.

And neither of these appeared to be part of the One & Only WINTER Clearance Event!

Hmm. I think I'll bring the info on my existing cranky stove in and see if they can simply fix the overheating problem. Their repairmen should be familiar with the beast, since my previous owners bought it there and this shop has been out to fix things on it before.

I was headed out the door when I remembered to ask the salesman, "Oh, yeah. How does this contest work?" He took me back to the service desk, where they had the winning numbers posted.

And what the hell, if all my numbers didn't match for one of the prizes. A "3 Day/2 Night Vacation Getaway."

Oh. That's nice. I actually won something. Oh!

"Something" being hotel accommodations for two at any one of quite a wide range of destinations, as close as just up the road, so to speak, or as far away as Honolulu, Hawaii.

I was aware of not being as excited as I might be. Maybe I wanted to stay cool so I could understand all the fine print on the redemption certificate. Maybe I wanted to keep my expectations down as to the quality of the hotels in question.

Maybe I was feeling inadequate for not being married and having an automatic other half of the "for two" to take up the other side of the deal.

Yes, well. I do like travel. And I do have girlfriends who'd enjoy going off on a larking kind of trip like this. And a good handful of the listed destinations were within driving distance.

So this evening I got ahold of my friend Frieda*, and we're going to visit Colonial Williamsburg sometime next spring, about the time we both celebrate our birthdays.

But as I was driving away from the appliance dealers, I found myself thinking, "Well, dammit. If I had the luck to win one of the prizes, why couldn't it have been the $10,000 kitchen makeover? I could have done a lot of good in the way of new appliances and a decent floor and countertops and some new lighting with that kind of dough, even if the cabinets and my adorable faux finish paint job are just fine. Why couldn't my luck just pushed me a little way further over? Answer me that, hmm?"

But instead, I had to win a lousy free hotel accommodation certificate. Sheesh.

The other prize was one of three iPhones.

Well, I console myself, I don't want to switch over to AT&T anyway.

Yeah, but I could have sold the thing on eBay and made some cash!

Shut up, kid, and be grateful! You and Frieda* are going to go to Williamsburg in the spring and you're going to look at antique buildings and pretty gardens and you're going to enjoy it all very, very much!

So there. And stop being a sore winner!
___________________
*Made-up name

O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast

This past August I read a novel by English author Rosamunde Pilcher called Winter Solstice. The main part of the action is set deep in December in a town on the far northwest coast of Scotland. She did such a fine job of describing the snow, the rain, the cold winter weather, that when I'd open the door to let the dog out I'd be surprised to feel the balmy breezes of a southwestern Pennsylvania summer.

And I was impressed how convincingly Mrs. Pilcher depicted her characters going out into this weather without moaning or complaining. They were continually out visiting, shopping, walking the dog, walking themselves, and the conditions seemed always to strike them as bracing, or envigorating, or, at the most, challenging.

Gosh, how admirable! Once winter has set in, whatever happens in my back yard stays there till next spring. In the dead of winter, once I'm inside I hardly want to open the door to pick up the mail!

But there's a basis for all this Pilcherian cheerfulness. As the creator of her novelistic world, she decreed that her characters should have a "well-built Victorian house" to live in and enough pounds and pence to keep the central heat going comfortably and to pay for logs to throw on the sitting room fire whenever wanted. It's easy to face inclement weather with good cheer when you know the house you'll return to is toasty and warm.

I wish I could rewrite my own current life story that way. But alas, no. I finally had enough and turned on the furnace night before last, and the highest it's going this winter is 61 degrees when I'm home and awake and 56 at night.

No, I'm not trying to reduce my carbon footprint. I'm just trying to reduce the drain on my wallet.

It's been all right so far. Really. The temperature outside hasn't gotten below the low 30s and the double-glazed windows are shut and locked. It helps having three cats to act as live hot water bottles, too.

I'll see how it goes once it gets colder. I suppose turning up the thermostat a bit is preferable to my sitting on my icy hands whining. Thinking of other and older British novels, the proverbial drafty 19th century manse may seem romantic, but living in a house that feels like one is not.